THE SHADOW Solves the Hampshire Horror (1945)

The Memoirs of SHERLOCKO THE MONK (1911)

Basil Wolverton's POWERHOUSE PEPPER down on the farm (1946)

Will Murray Strikes Again! THE SPIDER and THE HANGMAN FROM HELL

Yikes! Will Murray’s brand-spanking-new Spider novel is another magnificent feast for pulp fans.

I got a charge out of the first few pages, where Will gives a sly nod to one my own favorite pulp writers—Frederick Nebel. But the real shocker came on page 12, when I realized this was prelude to everyone’s favorite pulp epic—THE PURPLE INVASION.

Will has already treated us to some truly audacious ideas (like teaming Doc and the Shadow), Doc and Tarzan with King Kong, and the Spider with G-8 and Operator #5), but to thrust the Spider into the “War and Peace of the Pulps” is audacity on an even grander scale.

What the Spider and his guest-star Operator #5 don’t know—but we do—is that no matter how hard they fight to stop the Invasion (and they fight very hard), it’s coming at the U.S.A. like a juggernaut, and once it begins the Purple Empire (a thinly disguised Germany) marches across country taking untold millions in casualties.

But the threat of the Purple Invasion is just the context. The meat of the book is the relationship between Richard Wentworth and his guest star Jimmy Christopher and their battle against the bloodcurdling new villain Will has invented to bedevil them.

First the relationship. These heroes have met before (in Will’s earlier novel The Doom Legion), and respect each other’s abilities. Under other circumstances they could be close friends. But the straightlaced Operator #5, who sees right and wrong in strictly black and white, cannot abide the freewheeling philosophy of Wentworth, who recognizes that law and justice can be two different things. And Christopher’s suspicion that Wenworth himself is the Spider makes him even more prickly. So while the enormity of the threat facing the country demands they work together, they must dance around their differences—a handicap that takes them to the brink of being mortal enemies.

As the for the villain, The Hangman is a merciless psychopath who’s the point of the spear for a civilian army of homegrown Purple fascists. His rope, as you’ll see on the cover, has a noose at one end and a scythe at the other, and he’s equally deadly with both.

And, of course, this wouldn’t be a Spider novel without a grisly menace to the city, and Will serves one up that Wentworth’s chief raconteur, Novell Page, would have envied. What is it? I’ll let you discover it for yourself (and shudder!), but having accompanied Doc, the Shadow, G-8, #5, the Spider and many lesser heroes on such doomsday missions, I can assure you this is one of the creepiest.

Can our heroes catch or kill the Hangman before he kills them? Can they save New York without killing each other? Can they stop the Purple Invasion in its infancy and spare the USA a coast-to-coast bloodbath? 

Only Mr. Murray—and those who have read The Hangman from Hell—know for sure! 

HOPALONG CASSIDY Comic Strip - Week 7 (1951)

More next Week!

SPICY WESTERN Stories 1936-37

Movie Posters of 1937

THE SHADOW and the Coins of Feng Huang. (1945)